Meeting of the minds on McManus property

Edward F. Maroney

Thursday

Apr 18, 2013 at 2:00 AMApr 18, 2013 at 11:00 PM

The citizens advisory committee working on a comprehensive wastewater and nutrient management plan denied last week that it has designated a portion of the town-owned McManus property on Route 132 for discharge of treated wastewater.

Said not to be sole site for effluent discharge

The citizens advisory committee working on a comprehensive wastewater and nutrient management plan denied last week that it has designated a portion of the town-owned McManus property on Route 132 for discharge of treated wastewater.

Noting the presence of Barnstable Town Councilor Ann Canedy and Barnstable Fire District Water Commissioner Steve Whitmore at the April 11 meeting, CAC Chair Phil Boudreau said, “They’re very concerned that the town may dump effluent in an area they feel is in or very close to the zone of contribution to a well. I assured them this committee hasn’t vetted that site or any others in town. It’s not on our plate for a very long time.”

That said, Boudreau added, “all sites will be needed” to help the town meet its nitrogen removal goals. “If you don’t put it there, where do you put it? Move somebody’s well?”

Canedy said the entire McManus property was acquired with Land Bank funds for water protection and conservation, and that the town required an easement over part of the property for effluent discharge.

“Even though it has been repeatedly said the town has no plans for immediate use of that site, and I believe that,” Canedy said, “there are no alternative sites specifically enumerated in the comprehensive plan. It’s in the plan as the discharge site.”

Canedy asked the CAC to “reconsider and perhaps reject [the site] altogether for effluent discharge. If that’s not possible, the town needs to work more closely [with the water department] and assure that these wells will be protected through monitoring.”

Tom Mullen, the former DPW superintendent, said he found it “a bit astounding the town would pick a location directly adjacent to maybe a four million gallons a day water capacity.” Like Whitmore, he called for site tests of water infiltration before moving forward.

“If we’re going to sewer Cape Cod Community College, why not work out a deal to dispose of effluent over there,” Mullen asked. “All they’d have to do is take back water we cleaned up for them. They wouldn’t be stuck with a plant.”

“Testing was done,” said Nate Weeks, the town’s longtime consultant who’s a senior project manager at GHD. “It’s also important to point out that there are two different projects.”

A wastewater facilities plan in the early ‘90s, he said, identified multiple sites including McManus and the airport. Testing was done to determine the path of particle tracks and, as he recalled, the McManus site was “not directly upgradient” to wells.

On the other hand, sad Weeks, the current project “has a clean slate. It is looking at the whole universe of potential treated water recharge sites. We identified the same ones in play at the end of the wastewater facility plan and included McManus [out of respect for the family, Weeks noted, it’s called the Route 132 site in the latest plans].

Other sites were identified as well, amounting to “quite a long list,” according to Weeks, who added that “we are asked to stop because it was too sensitive when naming sites.”

Even so, Weeks said, planners recognized that “we needed to open up that process to all the water purveyors in town. We should not be looking for treated discharge sites that water purveyors are also looking at for further supplies.”

Weeks offered to sit down with Canedy to show that McManus had not been “singled out’ in the current plan. “It’s in a group of many sites identified.”

Whitmore was pleased. “That would remove a big sty from our eye,” he said.